


An Ordinary Obsession

by kuonji



Series: Scenes From An Alternate Universe [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Backstory, Character Study, F/M, Fanboying, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuonji/pseuds/kuonji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Timothy Drake had an obsessive personality.  It was just one of those things about him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ordinary Obsession

Timothy Drake had an obsessive personality. It was just one of those things about him. His parents were away a lot, and Tim didn't crave the company of his peers the way most kids did. He just found something to obsess over and... stuck with it for however long it lasted.

When he was little, he liked Greek myths. There was a room in the Drake mansion that still displayed the literally hundreds of models and figurines that he had collected and made himself. Most of the books he had moved out of his room into the main library, but he still had half a shelf devoted to the intrepid Odysseus and Jason and the powerful Centaurs and Titans.

In grade school, he dabbled in chemistry. He had a moderately well-equipped lab at home that he still experimented with from time to time, though most of his equipment had been donated to the local high school. Tim used to tell people that he would like to be a forensic specialist when he grew up. That remained one of his options, he supposed.

His latest interest was computers. It'd started with hardware, building computers, figuring out how they worked. He'd moved on into software and data-mining, and he'd tried his hand at hacking some games to give his characters super powers or infinite equipment. He'd thought about trying to hack into an official system, but decided against it. He didn't want to risk getting traced back to his parents' house and getting them in trouble.

Lately, he was starting to lose steam on that particular subject. He'd started dabbling in photography, sketch art, and tae kwon do instead. None of them quite captured his whole attention, however. No big deal. Something else would come along eventually.

One of Tim's best friends was a girl a year older than himself. She was in high school now while he was still in middle school, a status that she enjoyed lording over him.

Stephanie didn't date younger boys, a fact which Tim often pointed out to her as ridiculously sexist and hypocritical every time she mooned over some upperclassman. Tim waited (im)patiently for his growth spurt to hit. In the meantime, he listened to Steph gripe about school and boys and her dysfunctional home life, and saved the scraps of notes that she wrote him on memo paper with obnoxious purple pen, and cut out the doodles and stickers she put in his notebooks, and took photos of her whenever they went out together, and kissed her when she let him.

Tim's obsessive nature wasn't reserved just for academic subjects. Steph knew that about him, and she didn't mind. Tim liked that about her.

All that probably explained why Tim was here, today, at a sports event that would normally repel him for its raucous noise and overly complicated scoring system. (He'd gone through a baseball phase when he was nine or ten, but he was over it now and preferred to spend his time on other things.) Steph had insisted and even bought him a ticket ahead of time. _"You'll love it!"_ she had said. _"I promise!"_

Steph made silly promises like that. Weird thing was, she was usually right. So here Tim was.

Already, he was a little bewildered by the noise and the unpredictable behavior of the students around him, high on pre-game energy. Aside from the normal chaos, though, he also noticed a local news camera crew -- not the sports channel, and what he thought was abnormal amounts of security.

"What's going on?" he asked Steph once she exited the girls' bathroom. He handed her her freshly filled water bottle as they headed toward their seats. "People seem really, um, _excited_."

"Well, the rumor mill says that it's going to be a really _special_ game," she told him, with a wink.

He frowned. "Special, how?" Steph just smiled. She always loved it when she knew something he didn't. "Ste-e-e-ph," he whined. It was mostly just to make her laugh, since he knew it was useless to try to pry a scret out of her.

They squeezed slowly past a group of girls who were clustered around what looked like a photograph in one of the girl's hands.

"Oh my god, do you think he's really going to be here?" one of them squealed.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god," said another, her voice going up half an octave with each successive repetition. "If he really shows up I'm gonna _die_!"

"He's still single, right? _Tell_ me he's still single."

"I would cheat on _Brad Pitt_ to go on just one date with Dick Grayson."

A small huddle of boys standing in line for hot dogs were also talking excitedly as Tim and Steph passed. He caught the same name again.

"--Grayson. It'll be totally wild if he comes."

"Did you see that video? My brother showed me when I was in junior high. Never saw anyone move like that."

"You kidding? I watched the game live! I was a freshman then. Never seen anything like it since. I even joined the team but couldn't stick with it past sophomore year."

"No way, you worked with the guy? You think you can ask him for autographs and a picture? He must be crazy busy."

Tim cut a curious look at Stephanie. "Who is everyone talking about?" he asked. "The quarterback?" GHH wasn't particularly known for its sports teams that Tim knew of, but there were always local stars for students to fawn over.

That might explain Steph's excitement, at least. She liked the athletic types.

But Steph laughed at his suggestion. "No. A guy who graduated just before I started here. He was head cheerleader for one semester."

"You're kidding me, right?"

"No."

"They're all flipping out over a _cheerleader_?" He glanced back at the kids they'd passed. The girls were moderately good-looking to attractive, with tasteful makeup, and their clothes and accessories put them on the high end of being financially well-off for public school students. They didn't look like the typical groupies. The guys looked comfortably middle class, casually groomed, wearing brand-name but not designer labels, somewhere between jocks and nerds. They were also not the kind of guys Tim would normally expect to be fanboying a male cheerleader.

Steph just smiled. Any further questions he might have had were cut off when she took his hand. He held his breath for a fraction of a second, surprised as always by the amplified heat where their skin touched. "Come on," she said. "Our seats are this way."

He followed.

***

"Bats! Bats! Bats!" two thousand frenzied fans roared, most of them crossing their hands and flapping their fingers in the symbol of the Gotham Heights mascot -- a ferocious cartoon vampire bat.

Tim sighed, wishing for a drink of water. He was half-dizzy from standing under the sun for close to two hours in order to even see the field. (Why wouldn't the students _sit down_? That's what the bleachers were _for_ , weren't they?) He wasn't even sure what the crowd was cheering for, since the second quarter had just ended and the announcer had declared a twenty-minute break in play. There had been no evidence so far of what Steph had planned to show him.

The band struck up a rousing score as two dozen figures decked out in black, white, and blue poured out of the concourse. The boy leading them was wearing a garish half-mask shaped like a stylized bat's face. Tim figured he must be the mascot of the team. Squeals and whistles erupted from all sides of the stadium, rising over the crescendo of clapping hands and stomping feet.

"What's going on?" Tim asked Steph, having to lean over and shout in her ear. 

"The pep squad's performing their half-time show!" Steph shouted back, her eyes never leaving the field. "Oh, look! I think that must be him at the front."

"Who?" Tim asked, squinting and shading his eyes against the sun's glare.

The question became moot as the crowd started chanting, "Dick! Dick! Dick!" with almost as much fervor as before. The pep squad formed a circle around the costumed figure, and Tim made a face as 'Dick' raised his arms, displaying the short cape that was attached at his wrists, forming nylon batwings. The costumed boy made a clawing motion with both hands then punched the air, which caused the student body to scream and cheer louder than before. Many people imitated the move, growling as they did so.

Tim rolled his eyes. He was pretty sure bats -- even vampire bats -- didn't growl so much as _squeak_. He leaned toward Steph again. "Why don't people in bad costumes ever feel as ridi... cu... lous..." He trailed off as Dick began to _move_.

Handsprings, somersaults, twists and leaps and aerial kicks, and things Tim didn't even know the names for. One after another, the boy blazed through a floor routine of stunning skill, strength, and agility. Aside from assisting him by propelling him into the air and occasionally catching him, the pep squad mostly stayed out of his way. Tim could understand why. The boy was amazing. He didn't even need backup. That would only distract from his performance. Cheesy mask and nylon suit or not, he really seemed to _fly_.

Tim only remembered to breathe when the students around him exploded once more into cheers and claps several minutes later. Belatedly joining them, Tim stretched on his toes to catch a glimpse of Dick bowing, then running a circle around the pep squad with his arms out, his 'wings' rippling behind him. The kids in front of Tim jumped up and down, blocking his view. Tim _hated_ being so short.

At the end of the circle, Dick doffed the bat outfit and loped back to the squad, who received him with friendly slaps on the shoulders and a few hugs. Then they arranged themselves in two tight parallel lines, and the band started up again for a second routine.

This time, Dick worked with the team, only doing about as many stunts as any other of the more skilled members. He took his turn tossing other boys in the air as well, making it look perfectly easy, and he picked up some of the girls like they weighed nothing at all. They performed a total of three routines before leaving the field. Most of the members chose to incorporate a few spirited flips and cartwheels on the way out. Dick did a series of handsprings, culminating in a triple somersault. Dick waved at the cheering crowd and even made an extravagant bow before heading inside.

"Close your mouth, hon."

Tim snapped his mouth shut and glared at Steph. She looked horribly smug.

"That was... Who was that? How did he _do_ that? I didn't think a triple somersault was _possible_ off of a grass surface," he sputtered.

"Oh, did I forget to tell you? He won the gold in all the individual gymnastics events at the last Summer Olympics, in addition to the all-around. Broke three world records while he was at it."

"Wait, _wait_ a minute." The build and hair color were about right, maybe, but, "That was Richard Wayne." Tim hadn't paid much attention to sports since fifth grade, but even he had heard of Gotham's 'Boy Wonder'. He'd been quite the toast of the town for a while there. The Gotham City Council had awarded him a Lifetime Achievement medal. "I thought you said this guy's name was Grayson."

"It is. He legally became a Wayne after he was adopted, but he started high school as a Grayson, so people here still call him that. Anyway, it was the name he performed under when he was in the circus."

"The _circus_?"

"Uh-huh. That was before his parents were murdered and Bruce Wayne took him in."

" _What_?"

Stephanie patted his cheek. "I know that look. You're dying to run to the library, aren't you?"

"I-- yes." There was no point dissembling to Steph.

"It's okay. You can go. I'll tell you the score when I get back home." _As if you care_ , her look seemed to say.

"Thanks. Steph... Why, um, why did you bring me here, anyway?"

His friend tilted her head, causing the sun-bleached layers of her hair to cascade sideways, revealing rich shades of honeyed brown and dark blonde tinged with red where the light struck just so. Tim wished he had brought his camera. Steph smiled, as if reading his mind. "You told me you were starting to get bored with computers."

Tim blushed and ducked his head, mortified and yet also exhilarated at how well she knew him. "Oh," was all he said.

Stephanie was a _fantastic_ friend.

***

Six weeks later, Tim rang the bell at the front desk of the Park Row facility -- the founding facility -- of the Wayne Foundation Youth Recreational Centers. When a pleasant-looking Hispanic young woman came and asked if he needed help, he told her, "I'd like to sign up for Mr. Wayne's Wednesday evening trapeze class, please."

"There's a wait list. Next open spot is three months from now. Is that all right with you?"

"Yes."

He spoke calmly, but inside, he felt his gut shaking and squirming in anxious excitement.

The woman took his information and the check he'd filled out for the deposit -- one of the signed blank checks his parents left for him in their safe at home whenever they traveled -- and handed him a confirmation slip. He tucked the paper carefully into his inside jacket pocket before he left the Center. Once he got on the bus home, he pulled it out and ran his eyes over the words again and again.

Tim had an obsessive nature. It was just one of those things.

  
END.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story, you might try these:  
> [A Story With A Capital 'S' (Or Two)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/499794) (Nightwing, Teen Titans v3), by kuonji  
> [Potential](http://archiveofourown.org/works/372480) (Stargate SG-1), by kuonji  
> [A World Unspoiled](http://archiveofourown.org/works/558143/chapters/995815) (Batman, Robin), by whyfearit  
> [Much Needed Therapy](http://archiveofourown.org/series/24010) (Batman), by MissjuliaMiriam and myadamantiumheart


End file.
